Growing up in Alaska and fishing for salmon all my life, I learned to fish with spoons around the same time I learned to ride a bike and read a book. Spoons are deadly against aggressive predators in open water and a lot of fun too; however, spoons have their own kryptonite.

Like many large trebled lures, spoons are magnets for snags. Fishing in weeds with a spoon quickly becomes a dredging exercise, and at $4 to $8 apiece, it doesn’t take long to empty your tackle box and wallet when casting close to structure. This is especially true when fishing for pike in shallow water.

I learned this lesson on my first trip to Alexander Lake, two hours north or Anchorage. The lake was the color of tea and carpeted with a dense hodgepodge of weeds, surface vegetation, and open water. Alexander Lake absolutely crawled with pike; however, each lure I tried felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

The big spoons and plugs could attract pike from far away but were constantly caked in weeds. The weed-less lures avoided the snags but were smaller and quieter, which produced fewer strikes in the murky water. Even when I could find a clear path to retrieve a lure, the variety of bottom vegetation meant the pike were holding at different depths every few yards and nothing in my tackle box seemed able to keep up.

I believe that patience is not a virtue when fishing. If I am not landing fish, I change what I am doing. So I switched from lure to lure looking for something big and gaudy that could be fished at different depths while also being weedless.

The solution was dragging a trailer behind a big spoon. I removed the treble hook and replaced it with 6 to 10 inches of 30-pound steel leader running between the split ring and a 4/0 unweighted jig hook with 90-degree neck. The jig hook was baited with a 31⁄2-inch curlytail grub. After catching 83 pike in less than 24 hours of weedless ecstasy, I learned a few things about what a trailer can do for a spoon.

First, the trailer makes a big and cumbersome spoon relatively snag free. While a spoon is being retrieved, the treble hook is the lowest part of the lure. Consequently, the spoon snags anything it touches. However, with an unweighted trailer, the heavier spoons tend to swim an inch lower than the trailer. So when the lure strikes an object the spoon either bounces or plows a path for the trailer hook. Additionally, a jig hook with a 90-degree neck tends to swim point up, further reducing snags.

Another surprising benefit of using a soft plastic trailer is that the spoon can be used as a fantastic topwater lure. The trailer acts like the tail of a kite and increases drag, keeping the spoon from sinking. When the spoon hits the water give the spoon a jerk, keep your rod tip up, and start retrieving immediately. The spoon slops across the top of the water leaving a fantastic wake. You can either do a straight retrieve or “walk the dog” by twitching your rod tip.

Trailers also allow spoons to wobble effectively at a slower speed while maintaining a constant depth. This can be a big advantage when fishing pressured areas or colder water. The trailer’s affect on the spoon’s speed is a result of its drag, which can be adjusted by the size and shape of trailers chosen. If you decide that you need a faster, deeper retrieve and you don’t want to switch to a smaller trailer, a bullet weight in front of the spoon or split shot just below the split ring fixes that.

The other benefit of using a spoon and trailer is that more strikes result in clean hookups. Larger spoons work great for attracting aggressive hits from far away, but they also increase the odds that fish bite bare metal instead of the hook, especially fish with smaller mouths, like trout. When a predatory fish chases down a spoon with a trailer, the trailer is what they intercept and attack first. This increases the odds of the fish striking the hook’s point and results in fewer one-hit wonders.

If you are still getting strikes on the spoon instead of the trailer, a bifurcated hook (like those used on frog and mouse lures) can be attached to the spoon. This keeps the spoon weedless without hurting the trailer’s performance. Without removing the steel leader, feed the bifurcated hook through the split ring with the points up towards the unpainted side of the spoon. If tangles become a problem, lash the steel leader to the shank of the bifurcated hook with a small rubber band or fishing line.

Since that first trip to Alexander Lake, I have had a great time using spoons with trailers in all sorts of conditions and for all sorts of fish. When you need a big flashy versatile lure that goes places other lures can’t, try dragging your favorite softbait behind your favorite spoon and see what happens.

Luke Nichols is a freelance writer from Arlington, Virginia.